“It feels good to be over .500, but we’ve got to go home immediately and get this one [against Brooklyn] on Friday,” guard Payton Pritchard said. “So that’s the main focus. We’ve got to keep this going, and just, every game is going to be a battle.”
The final part of Pritchard’s statement has become apparent. The Nets entered Tuesday with just two wins, and will almost certainly spend most of the season toiling near the bottom of the standings and dreaming about this spring’s loaded draft class.
But for long stretches of this game it was not easy to identify the superior team. The Celtics were averaging a league-low 11 turnovers per game and topped that mark with 12 during a messy and disjointed first half, with the Nets capitalizing on those miscues with a 22-0 edge in quick-break points.
After the Celtics raced to an 11-point third-quarter lead and appeared to restore a sense of normalcy, they started the fourth quarter with a four-minute scoring drought.
Boston was fortunate that its defense did not retreat. During a powerful fourth quarter, the Celtics forced seven turnovers, held the Nets to 4-of-15 shooting overall and 1 of 9 from the 3-point line, and surrendered just 14 points.
“It felt like we were way more active on defense, which led to easy buckets on the offensive end, which opened up a lot of things for us,” forward Sam Hauser said. “Overall, it started on the defensive end.”
Hauser, who played just seven minutes in Boston’s win over the Clippers on Sunday, was on the floor for a team-high 11:42 in the fourth quarter Tuesday. In that period he had 3 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals, a diverse stat line for a player primarily deployed as a 3-point marksman.
Jaylen Brown scored 23 of his game-high 29 points in the second half to lead the Celtics. He played just 10 minutes in the first half despite not picking up any fouls. Coach Joe Mazzulla said afterward he just wanted to disperse playing time so the Celtics were well-positioned for the second half.
The decrease was a rarity for the Celtics All-Star. Brown was less diplomatic and more frank about the situation.
“I was just playing like [expletive] in the first half, honestly,” he said. “I turned the ball over, so it just took a minute for me to figure it out. I kind of picked it up to close the game. But I’ve got to come out to a better start in the first half, especially in the first quarter, because the team kind of feeds off me. I know that, so I’ve got to be better. Joe is just holding me to a higher standard.”
Brown committed three turnovers in his 10 first-half minutes and said he and the others need to understand that a missed shot is better than a turnover that ignites a quick-break attempt for the opponent.
But he was hardly alone.
“If you have to throw 50 passes, you’ve got to be great on 48-50 of them, and we just weren’t on some of those,” Mazzulla said. “So it just left us an area to get better at.”
The Celtics committed eight turnovers in the second half, still above their normal rate, but better than what transpired earlier. Mazzulla said that once Boston’s defense settled into half-court situations it neutralized the strengths of the Nets, who simply do not have dominant isolation scorers.
Pritchard finished with 22 points and 10 rebounds, and his array of deep, contested 3-pointers in the first half helped Boston withstand the Nets’ surprising early onslaught.
Boston led, 62-61, at halftime before a well-rested Brown took over in the third. His 3-point play followed by a 3-pointer ignited the 8-0 run that gave Boston a 75-65 lead. Later in the quarter, he was fouled on three consecutive possessions.
Still, the Nets lingered. In the final 1:06 of the third, Ziaire Williams and Tyrese Martin banger 3-pointers to help Brooklyn pull within 89-85 at the start of the fourth.
But after Brooklyn took a 90-89 lead on a Michael Porter Jr. 3-pointer, the Celtics needed just more than a minute to unspool an 8-0 run that was capped by a Hauser 3-pointer.
Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at adam.himmelsbach@globe.com. Follow him @adamhimmelsbach.
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